I'm saying I'm not getting the speed I'm paying for and my ISP is saying those web speedtests are useless (but my performance has degraded and the web speedtests are showing me about 60% of what I had before).

My setup is several devices that all access through a wifi router and one device that accesses through a direct connection.

The wifi and direct connection go into a switch and the switch goes to a router.

I can't log-in to the router, but I thought maybe I could swap out the ISP-provided switch with a smartswitch or install a machine that acts kinda like a firewall to log bandwidth/speed over time, between the switch and the router.

The point here is to present the guy with a log of actual speeds the network experiences over a given time period rather than running software loggers on each device.

I would not look at trying to benchmark your d/l and u/l speeds on your own. Take the easy road and send your ISP some daily, twice daily,...... Screenshots of what some automated tests will give you. They will likely put more weight in that versus your own setup to rate it.

Yeah, I thought sending speed tests (ookla and speakeasy) would do the trick too.

The answers I get from the ISP discount speed tests as being non-representative of multi-stream data throughput (which I don't disagree with entirely).

However, I contend that I'm hitting a cap that was previously set higher, judging by both performance degradation and, yes, previous speed tests. It could simply be that traffic-shaping is stepping on my throughput, but I need network logs to illustrate that.

To quote the ISP:

"...the test you are using is not really an indicator of anything other than what the minimum speed you can get on a single thread is. There is no way for you to measure your speed on our network with that kind of test, you would need to monitor speeds at your router and actually use the Internet for various things at the same time from different devices in order to see your maximum possible throughput..."

So, what do you think, Don? Run something like pfsense.org from a linux-box? smart-switch? managed-switch?

What's a good way to monitor/log my network throughput that won't step on my bandwidth too much?

It would be good if that were an option, but this is a rural area, no DSL, no Cable, just a wireless dish pointed at an AP that's connected to an L.A. backhaul by cable.

What you'd pay 35/mo for from Warner or Comcast costs me 100/mo, so in this case it's in my best interests to log these speeds myself to insure some kind of accuracy (if not verification).

Quote:

...Is it all HTTP, or do you also use P2P protocols...

It's probably shaping that's causing this. I only download http, never use p2p clients and have unlimited usage, no metering. It's just speed/performance issues. Been with these guys for eight years, they do the best they can, but they're a small outfit and they're pretty stretched, these logs will help them see what's going on.